Published: July 23, 2008 08:16 pm      

Early morning fire destroys Tazewell, Va., landmark

TAZEWELL, Va. — A fire of unknown origin destroyed a historic landmark in Tazewell early Wednesday morning.

The Tazewell County 911 Communications Center received a call at 2:05 a.m. of a fire at the old Jeffersonville Hospital on Tower Street. Crews from the town of Tazewell Fire Department, the Tazewell County Fire and Rescue Squad, Thompson Valley Volunteer Fire Department, the Baptist Valley Fire Department and the Richlands Fire Department all responded and battled the blaze into the early morning hours.

“It’s still smoldering,” Tazewell Police Chief Brian Hieatt said Wednesday afternoon. “There is no roof left. The whole inside is gone with the exception of maybe one room that has minor damage, but the rest of it is almost all gone.”

The hospital first opened in 1926. It stayed in operation as an area hospital until Tazewell Community Hospital opened in 1973. The structure was one of the town’s historic landmarks.

Hieatt said an arson investigation team from the Virginia State Police was dispatched to the scene Wednesday afternoon.

The cause of the fire wasn’t immediately known.

“We had a lot of lightening (Tuesday) night, and we had a tree that caught on fire due to the lighting,” Hieatt said. “At this time we don’t know if it (the fire) was related to the weather, or if it could be arson.”

The investigation has been turned over to Lt. Greg Layne of the Tazewell Police Department and the arson investigation unit of the Virginia State Police, George Pilkins, chief of the Tazewell Fire Department, said.

Pilkins said about 30 men from the five different fire departments battled the blaze into the early morning hours. Pilkins said the structure is probably a complete loss.

The old three-story hospital had been serving most recently as a residential dwelling, but the occupants of the structure were not at home at the time of the fire.

“The family was gone,” Hieatt said. “It looks like they lost everything. “They had a side garage attached to it that wasn’t damaged, but as far as everything else it’s gone”

Flora Sinkford, an employee of the Tazewell Police Department, said her first job in 1969 was working at the old Jeffersonville Hospital as a receptionist.

“It was a three-story hospital back then,” Sinkford said. “It predominantly had private rooms, but it also had kind of like at that time a nursing home. They had one side where they kept four or five elderly patients. I got my first job there as a receptionist. I worked from being a receptionist to the insurance person.”

The structure was an important historical landmark in Tazewell, Town Manager Jerry Wood said.

“I know it was a hospital when I first came here in 1971,” Wood said. “It’s a very historic structure.”

– Contact Charles Owens at cowens@bdtonline.com